1843. On a remote Scottish island, Ivar, the sole occupant, leads a life of quiet isolation until the day he finds a man unconscious on the beach below the cliffs. The newcomer is John Ferguson, an impoverished church minister sent to evict Ivar and turn the island into grazing land for sheep. Unaware of the stranger's intentions, Ivar takes him into his home, and in spite of the two men having no common language, a fragile bond begins to form between them. Meanwhile on the mainland, John's wife Mary anxiously awaits news of his mission. Against the rugged backdrop of this faraway spot beyond Shetland, Carys Davies's intimate drama unfolds with tension and tenderness: a touching and crystalline study of ordinary people buffeted by history and a powerful exploration of the distances and connections between us. Perfectly structured and surprising at every turn, Clear is a marvel of storytelling, an exquisite short novel by a master of the form.

A “daring and necessary…sophisticated and playful” (The New York Times) novel from an award-winning writer, Clear is the story of a minister dispatched to a remote island to “clear” its last remaining inhabitant—an unforgettable tale of resilience, change, and hope.

John, an impoverished Scottish minister, has accepted a job evicting the lone remaining occupant of an island north of Scotland—Ivar, who has been living alone for decades, with only the animals and the sea for company. Though his wife, Mary, has serious misgivings about the errand, he decides to go anyway, setting in motion a chain of events that neither he nor Mary could have predicted.

Shortly after John reaches the island, he falls down a cliff and is found, unconscious and badly injured, by Ivar who takes him home and tends to his wounds. “Clear chronicles the surprising bond that develops between these two men…pack[ing] a great deal of power into a compact tale” (The Wall Street Journal) about connection, home, and hope—in which John begins to learn Ivar’s language, and Ivar sees himself reflected through the eyes of another person for the first time in decades.

Unfolding during the final stages of the infamous Scottish Clearances—a period of the 19th century which saw whole communities of the rural poor driven off the land in a relentless program of forced evictions—this singular novel explores what binds us together in the face of insurmountable difference, the way history shapes our deepest convictions, and how the human spirit can endure despite all odds. Moving and unpredictable, “a love letter to the scorching power of language” (The Guardian), Clear is “a jewel of a novel” (The Washington Post)—a profound and unforgettable read.

Fleeing his demons and the dark undercurrents of life in Britain, Hilary Byrd takes refuge in a south Indian mission house next door to the presbytery where the Padre and his adoptive daughter, Priscilla, live. As Hilary's friendship with Priscilla grows, so too do the religious and nationalist tensions around them, and the mission house may not be the safe haven it seems. Meticulously crafted and tenderly subversive, The Mission House is a deeply human story of the wonders and terrors of connection in a modern world.

Shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize 2019

When Cy Bellman, American settler and widowed father of Bess, reads in the newspaper that huge ancient bones have been discovered in a Kentucky swamp, he leaves his small Pennsylvania farm and young daughter to find out if the rumours are true: that the giant monsters are still alive, and roam the uncharted wilderness beyond the Mississippi River.

West is the story of Bellman's journey and of Bess, waiting at home for her father to return. Written with compassionate tenderness and magical thinking, it explores the courage of conviction, the transformative power of grief, the desire for knowledge and the pull of home, from an exceptionally talented and original British writer. It is a radiant and timeless epic-in-miniature, an eerie, electric monument to possibility.

Winner of the 2015 International Frank O'Connor Short Story Award Winner of the 2015 Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize Shortlisted for the 2015 Wales Book of the Year: Fiction Shortlisted for the 2015 Edge Hill Short Story Prize The Globe 100: The Best International Fiction of 2017 In a remote Australian settlement a young wife with an untellable secret reluctantly invites her neighbour into her home. A Quaker spinster offers companionship to a condemned man in a Colorado jail. In the ice and snows of Siberia an office employee from Birmingham witnesses a scene that will change her life. At a jubilee celebration in a northern English town a middle-aged alderman opens his heart to Queen Victoria. A teenage daughter leaves home in search of adventure. High in the Cumbrian fells a woman seeks help from her father's enemy. Spare, precise, charged with a prickly wit, the stories in Carys Davies's sparkling second collection remind us how little we know of the lives of others.

Short Circuit fills a real gap in the text book market. Written by 24 prizewinning writers and teachers of writing, this book is intensely practical. Each expert discusses necessary craft issues: their own writing processes, sharing tried and tested writing exercises and lists of published work they find inspirational. Endorsed by The National Association of Writers in Education, it became recommended or required reading for Creative Writing courses in the UK and beyond, including Goldsmiths, The University of Kent at Canterbury, Glasgow University, John Cabot University in Rome, Stockholm University in Sweden, Sussex University, Brighton University, Edge Hill University, Chichester University, The National University of Ireland in Galway, and University Campus Suffolk, at Ipswich.

North American fiction debut by the winner of the 2015 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award. Winner of the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize 2016. Shortlisted for the Wales 2015 Book of the Year - Fiction. Carys Davies has been selected one of 18 Fellows for the 2016-2017 season at the New York Public Library's Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. This book was very well received in the UK and is bound to be a success in America with fans of literary fiction in the vein of Joy Williams and Alice Munro.

From the award-winning author of West and The Mission House Some New Ambush is the first collection of short stories from award-winning writer Carys Davies. Love, loss, birth, death, betrayal, madness - they all lie in wait for Davies's characters in their startlingly different worlds: a dry cleaner's shop in contemporary Chicago, a mining town in South Wales in the sixties, a lunatic asylum in nineteenth century northern England. Shot through with wit and aching emotional poignancy, these stories tell of how we attempt to confront the things life throws in our path - often when we least expect them, and in places where we never thought to look. They tell of the mistakes we make along the way, and of how we try to deal with the whole difficult, unpredictable business. There is the boy who steps into his best friend's clothes in a desperate bid to fulfil his dreams, the man who comes up with an amazing new invention to win the heart of the woman he loves, the bored young wife doomed to live on an island where everything is red, the middle-aged woman who finds a baby in the sand and passes it off as her own.